LONDON - Canada has had its worst Summer Olympics ever in London, according to the International Olympic Committee medal standings.

The Canadian team placed 36th in the standings used by the IOC - and 202 of the 204 countries participating in the XXX Olympiad - winning just one gold medal, five silver and 12 bronze. Canada's previous worst results were 27th at Montreal in 1976 and Munich in 1972. At Beijing four years ago, Canada ranked 19th.

The IOC's count is somewhat unfair to Canada, given it's based on a system where gold medals alone determine placement unless two countries tie for golds won, in which case the country with more silver medals ranks higher.

But the IOC's arithmetic is no less cockeyed than the criteria used by the Canadian government and the Canadian Olympic Committee, which gives all medals equal weight. This loopy method of calculating sporting prowess, and the sophistry that always goes with it, puts Canada - with its one gold medal and 18 in total - ahead of far less populous countries such as Hungary, which won eight gold, Kazakhstan with seven and New Zealand and Cuba with five each.

If this was accounting, Canada's mathematical gyrations would be called cooking the books. If this was politics it would be akin to gerrymandering.

By Canada's perverse logic its athletes - whose sole gold here was in trampolining - performed better than those from Jamaica, whose sprinters seized four gold medals and provided these Olympics with several of their most breathtaking moments.

The only other country to use the Canadian counting system is the United States, but it is irrelevant for Old Glory as its athletes topped both the gold and overall medal tables in London, as they have at almost every Olympics.

Establishing who ranks where would be much fairer if five points were awarded for a gold, three for a silver and one for a bronze. Using this formula, Canada would be 22nd with 27 points rather than 13th or 36th.

Even following Canada's self-serving tabulation, it is clear that Ottawa and the COC set the bar too low when they declared that their goal was to finish in the top 12. Given Canada's wealth, the size of its population, the money it spends on sport and its many high quality training facilities, the country's sports bureaucrats should have aimed for an eighth-place finish and certainly nothing below 10th.

Worse than Canada's disappointing result is that fact that these results do not appear to have perturbed the federal government, the COC or a congenitally forgiving media and public. Meanwhile, in Australia - with 40-per-cent fewer people than Canada - it is a national scandal that its team only won seven gold and 35 medals.

Australia's embarrassment provided lots of merry fodder for the British media. Canada's much weaker results, have not, so far I as know, merited even one mention. In fact, Canada's Olympians, the women soccer team excepted, has barely registered here at all.

This is in no way to denigrate the zeal or heart of Canada's sportsmen and sportswomen. They are almost universally humble, engaging and dedicated to their sport, their teammates and their country. However, when the few of them that are elite athletes succumb to the pressures, are hobbled by injuries or are unlucky, Canada has few other stars to draw on.

Canada's ballyhooed Own the Podium program spends $34 million a year preparing athletes for the Summer Games. That is clearly not enough of an investment if Canada wishes to compete with Britain, which confirmed Sunday that it will continue spending about $180 million a year on elite sport through 2016 using taxpayers and lottery money, and Australia, which spends about $175 million a year on elite athletes and whose Olympic association has $100 million in the bank.

As for China, who knows what it is spending to build a chillingly effective Stakhanovite system designed solely to produce gold medallists, but it must be a colossal sum.

As it is, Canada will have great difficultly keeping its place as perhaps the 22nd best country in the Summer Olympics. The number of gold medals to be won has nearly doubled since the Montreal Games, but the number of countries winning medals has grown at a greater rate, soaring to 85 from 41.

The Harper government has made a lot of noise about how Canada is a world-class country that can compete with anyone. If it is sincere about this it must double or triple the amount of money that Ottawa spends to prepare Olympians and do a far better job of deciding which sports are deserving. A case can be made, for example, for putting more money into team sports rather than some of the sillier new Olympic sports where Canada's chances will drop sharply when other countries start to take them seriously The COC must also do a far better job. It is a bit of a mess at the moment, with serious dissatisfaction over its self-aggrandizing leadership. A purge is required to bring in a much younger and more dynamic group of altruistic, prodigiously well-informed men and women - with a long and deep commitment to amateur sport - to design and manage a sophisticated program so that Canada can compete against countries such as Britain, France, South Korea and Australia and surpass Hungary, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Cuba, New Zealand and Iran. It also badly needs an entirely new public relations strategy, one that is not micro-managed as if the COC is the Prime Minister's Office, with comments closely vetted and athletes protected from enemies who do not exist.

Olympic sport is much more than blood and sweat. It requires big money, ingenuity, perseverance and deliberately high standards to shoot for. If action is not taken soon, Canada is doomed to continue to be a nation of plucky sporting minnows at a time when the country is becoming a respected global player in so many other arenas.

fisherrmatthew@hotmail.com

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